Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Budget Committee, issued the following statement regarding the ongoing debate and consideration of Senate Republicans’ modified budget resolution.
“I take my votes on the Senate floor very seriously. While, tonight, I needed to be with my husband while he receives care at the hospital—I am in close touch with my colleagues and I am ready to return to the floor at a moment’s notice if any vote should hinge on my attendance. I strongly oppose Republicans’ pro-billionaire, anti-middle-class budget blueprint, and I will continue to fight this legislation every step of the way as Republicans draft a final bill for consideration.
“Let me be clear about the path Republicans have chosen to go down: they are going to light more than $5 trillion on fire—not to protect Social Security or make child care more affordable, but to shower billionaires with tax cuts they don’t need, pushing our country into an unprecedented level of debt. And in a move that shows they truly must think the American people aren’t watching, Republicans are trying to use magic math to pretend trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires cost nothing. Budgets aren’t magic—they’re math, and even my former preschool students would know the difference between zero and a trillion.
“No billionaire left behind—that is the Republican agenda. The message Republicans are sending folks back home is that there is always more money for billionaires, but it’s tough times for everyone else—which means kicking kids off Medicaid and choking off cancer research.
“No one is asking Congress to pass a bill that slashes Medicaid and closes hospitals just so Elon Musk can line his pockets with a big tax break; instead, we should be working together to reverse Trump’s tariff taxes on everyday goods.
“Make no mistake, as Trump runs our economy into the ground, Republicans are handing money to billionaires hand over fist, while raising prices—raising taxes—on virtually every working American. Republicans are cheering Trump as he drives America towards a painful recession—but Democrats are fighting back to stop them. At every turn, I will keep fighting to protect Medicaid, Social Security, and the programs that help families and keep us all safe. I will keep fighting to bring economic sanity back to this country and make government work better for working people—and I will continue to strongly oppose Republicans’ pro-billionaire, pro-recession agenda.”
The budget blueprint Senate Republicans unveiled this week sets Republicans up to dole out more than $5.3 trillion in new tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit billionaires, the ultra-rich, and largest corporations. But to help allow themselves to make the tax cuts permanent without making even more devastating cuts to, for example, Americans’ health care under the Senate’s strict budget reconciliation rules, Republicans want to use a gimmick known as “current policy baseline” to pretend that extending $3.8 trillion in tax cuts won’t cost the country a cent—and to try to make them permanent in clear violation of the longstanding Byrd rule that enforces reconciliation in the Senate. The budget resolution also sets Republicans up to make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and other critical domestic programs.
Today, budget experts from across the political spectrum wrote in part, “Using fabricated scorekeeping renders much of the Congressional Budget Act pointless and acts to evade responsibility for the resulting bottom line numbers. Congress cannot budget responsibly if it refuses to ever consider what policies actually cost. There is no point of budget enforcement if Congress gets to pick the score it wants.”
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget issued a new report today that made plain Republicans’ budget resolution would enable unprecedented deficit increases. It would:
- Equal more than all spending programs except for the Social Security retirement program, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense.
- Add as much to deficits as the American Rescue Plan, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, CARES Act, and bipartisan infrastructure law combined, including more than three times as much as the American Rescue Plan and over 14 times as much as the bipartisan infrastructure law.
- Cost as much or more than a large social welfare program, specifically five times as much as all Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies, 4.5 times as much as Medicare Part D, three times as much as the Social Security Disability Insurance program, and more than three-quarters of all federal Medicaid spending.
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